Managing Your Mail

Now is a good time to decide how you will be handling the
mail that you receive from the other schools, before you go any further.
There are many different strategies and you need to find the one that
fits best within your teaching style and with your particular students.

Sending and Receiving Messages

The first decision is who will be sending and receiving
mail. For some, access will be in the classroom; for others it will be
necessary for the teacher or students to take computer disks to a location
where a computer has a connection to the Internet. Sometimes this is the
media center or the office.

The sending and receiving of messages in Learning Circles
will be different for each classroom. Some classes will be working within
a conference structure others will be using electronic mail. Electronic
mail makes it very easy for students of any age to take over the role
of sending and receiving messages. Many teachers like to involve their
students in the process. A few students might volunteer to send and receive
mail for the whole session. A common procedure is for the teacher to show
one group how to send and receive mail and then for each group to teach
the next one.

While it is technically easy for students to send mail,
it remains important for teachers to play a role in reviewing what is
sent on the network. In some cases, without teacher supervision, students
have sent messages that are nonproductive or offensive. It is a good practice
to have your electronic mail senders print a copy of outgoing mail and
show it to you before they send it online. This gives you a chance to
check it one more time for editing errors. It also keeps you aware of
the work that will represent you, your class, your school and community
to people at a distance.

Receiving Mail from Others

Normally, the classes in a Learning Circle send about 1-3
messages a week. This means that you can plan on receiving between 8-30
messages a week. Some messages will be "to" you as the teacher, many will
be addressed to the whole class, and others may be to a group of students
who are working on a specific project. They may be "from" a teacher, a
whole class, a group of students, or an individual. You will need to decide
which messages should be read by everyone, which should be read by groups,
and how information will be shared among the all of the Circle participants
at your school. This is easy to do if you spend a few minutes planning
the best strategy, and are ready with it before you start receiving mail.